Your Connected Vehicle Is Arriving

As our cars become networked—to the Internet and to one another—new trends in technology and society will redefine transportation. What’s certain: tomorrow’s automobiles will provide experiences that go well beyond driving.

The networking of vehicles to the Internet and each other over the next decade will spark new technological and societal trends in which automobiles of the future offer experiences that transcend driving, writes Gartner analyst Thilo Koslowski. He cites expected benefits such as lower accident rates, higher productivity, reduced emissions, on-demand entertainment for passengers, and in-vehicle health monitoring.

Koslowski says carmakers need to offer in-vehicle access to Web data so that they can maintain their relevance, and he argues that “the automotive industry must capture consumers’ interest in digital lifestyle offerings and adapt the relevant technologies to the car.” Koslowski says the one technology that offers the greatest possibility of meeting various transportation challenges presented by the global population explosion as well as the growth of the aged populace is the self-driving vehicle.

He also projects that the goals of zero accidents and real-time traffic management will come closer to realization over the next 10 years due to the continued development of sensors, computing power, machine learning, and big-data analytics. Koslowski also foresees the self-organization of cars that know their own location and that of other vehicles, enabling traffic flow optimization, pollution reduction, less congestion, and higher overall mobility. Article

DCL: We’ve been hearing about this from the automotive manufacturers for ten years. And the Grand Challenge races for robot cars go on year after year. When will it happen?